What the hell cables are you using?

I was auditioning the B&W Diamonds of my childhood dream when I noticed what they were wired with. Massive, thick, intimidating cables, like two anacondas on the floor. So I asked about them.

My dealer looked at me and turned the question around. He was about to sell me Diamond Series speakers, so what the hell cables was I using at home? He was a friend of my father, and he was not being rude, he was being accurate.

For more than a decade I had run Yamaha, Denon and Marantz receivers, mostly for home theatre, with my father's Technics turntable and a CD player plugged in, then an Apple TV and a PlayStation 3. In all those years I never once set a budget for cables. They were the thing that came with the box, or the thing that looked decent next to it.

He was not only asking about wire. He was asking whether I understood what I was about to buy, a speaker that would show me everything upstream, including the cables I had never chosen. The Vincent cables he threw in for free, fat, heavy, sturdy, meaty, made the point the moment I got home.

The question cost me nothing. Answering it properly has cost me over $35,000 since.